diff --git a/docs/faq.md b/docs/faq.md
index 75c08cb6473..bd8bee44a5d 100644
--- a/docs/faq.md
+++ b/docs/faq.md
@@ -152,3 +152,16 @@ This is done so to be compliant with the broader Python ecosystem.
 
 For example, if Poetry builds a distribution for a project that uses a version that is not valid according to
 [PEP 440](https://peps.python.org/pep-0440), third party tools will be unable to parse the version correctly.
+
+
+### My requests are timing out!
+
+Poetry's default HTTP request time out is 15 seconds, the same as `pip`.
+Similar to `PIP_REQUESTS_TIMEOUT`, the experimental environment variable `POETRY_REQUESTS_TIMEOUT`
+can be set to alter this value. As this environment variable is **unstable**, it may be removed in the future, but
+not before being replaced with a permanent alternative.
+
+Note that it is almost always better to debug network stability than to blindly increase
+the request timeout -- the timeout controls how long it Poetry waits to establish a HTTP
+request/connection, and not how long Poetry will wait for a response to finish
+(Poetry will keep on waiting as long as the response is unfinished).
diff --git a/src/poetry/utils/constants.py b/src/poetry/utils/constants.py
index 0f799b16d7d..00cedb09345 100644
--- a/src/poetry/utils/constants.py
+++ b/src/poetry/utils/constants.py
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 from __future__ import annotations
 
+import os
+
 
 # Timeout for HTTP requests using the requests library.
-REQUESTS_TIMEOUT = 15
+REQUESTS_TIMEOUT = int(os.getenv("POETRY_REQUESTS_TIMEOUT", 15))